Environmental isotope and nuclear techniques provide unmatched insights into the processes governing the water cycle and its variability. This monograph presents state of the art applications and new developments of isotopes in hydrology, environmental disciplines and climate change studies. Coverage ranges from the assessment of groundwater resources in terms of recharge and flow regime to studies of the past and present global environmental and climate changes.

This book represents a new "earth systems" approach to catchments that encompasses the physical and biogeochemical interactions that control the hydrology and biogeochemistry of the system. The text provides a comprehensive treatment of the fundamentals of catchment hydrology, principles of isotope geochemistry, and the isotope variability in the hydrologic cycle -- but the main focus of the book is on case studies in isotope hydrology and isotope geochemistry that explore the applications of isotope techniques for investigating modern environmental problems. Isotope Tracers in Catchment Hydrology is the first synthesis of physical hydrology and isotope geochemistry with catchment focus, and is a valuable reference for professionals and students alike in the fields of hydrology, hydrochemistry, and environmental science. This important interdisciplinary text provides extensive guidelines for the application of isotope techniques for all investigatores facing the challenge of protecting precious water, soil, and ecological resources from the ever-increasing problems associated with population growth and environmental change, including those from urban development and agricultural land uses.

Groundwater is an increasingly important resource to human populations around the world, and the study and protection of groundwater is an essential part of hydrogeology - the subset of hydrology that concentrates on the subsurface. Environmental isotopes, naturally occurring nuclides in water and solutes, have become fundamental tools for tracing

Environmental Tracers in Subsurface Hydrology synthesizes the research of specialists into a comprehensive review of the application of environmental tracers to the study of soil water and groundwater flow. The book includes chapters which cover ionic tracers, noble gases, chlorofluorocarbons, tritium, chlorine-36, oxygen-18, deuterium, and isotopes of carbon, strontium, sulphur and nitrogen. Applications of the tracers include the estimation of vertical and horizontal groundwater velocities, groundwater recharge rates, inter-aquifer leakage and mixing processes, chemical processes and palaeohydrology. Practicing hydrologists, soil physicists and hydrology professors and students will find the book to be a valuable support in their work.

This publication presents, in a simple, but scientifically rigorous manner, the consequences of natural processes to stable isotope concentrations and radioactivities, and discusses the implications of these processes.

This book presents a quantitative treatment of the theory and natural variations of light stable isotopes. It discusses isotope distribution in the context of fractionation processes, thermodynamics, mass conservation, exchange kinetics, and diffusion theory, and includes more than 100 original equations. The theoretical principles are illustrated with natural examples that emphasize oxygen and hydrogen isotope variations in natural waters, terrestrial and extraterrestrial rocks, and hydrothermal systems. New data on meteoric precipitation, rivers, springs, formation fluids, and hydrothermal systems are included in relation to various natural phenomena. Essentially, this book seeks to reconnect the diverse phenomenological observations of isotope distribution to the quantitative theories of physical chemistry and the language of differential equations. It may serve as a textbook for advanced students, as a research reference, or as a quick source of information. The book is organized into five chapters, each followed by suggested quantitative problems and a short reference list. The three theoretical chapters progress from an elementary review of the physical chemistry of stable isotopes, to the thermodynamics of isotopic compounds, and finally to the calculation of isotope distribution in dynamic systems. The third and fifth chapters emphasize oxygen and hydrogen isotope variations in Earth's hydrosphere and lithosphere, constituting the most important examples of the theoretical principles. Appendices provide data on atomic weights of light elements, physical constants, mathematical relationships, and isotopic fractionation factors.